


an examination of the treatment of houseplants; or, the chronicles of a specific small plant

by raidiation



Series: The Plants In Good Omens Feel Fear [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Violence towards Plants, bbc radio 4 - Freeform, experiments in trying to write like neil gaiman, god that's kind of horrifying what have i done, good omens - Freeform, houseplants with an imagination, how aziraphale and crowley interact with plants, oof that's an archive warning right there, semi-sentient houseplants, the examination of plant treatment that nobody asked for, the plants in good omens feel fear, violent toward plants i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 17:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19399354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raidiation/pseuds/raidiation
Summary: Crowley yells at his plants to keep them motivated. Aziraphale was a gardener, once.Since the plants shake with fear when Crowley threatens them, it naturally follows that not only can plants in the Good Omens T.V. universe hear, that they can move, and they can also experience fear. In this essay I will—(Crowley and Aziraphale treat plants very differently.)





	an examination of the treatment of houseplants; or, the chronicles of a specific small plant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Buckets_Of_Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buckets_Of_Stars/gifts).



> here's the deal. if someone had told me that i'd be writing good omens fanfiction from the sort-of-POV of a plant a year ago, i probably would have been very confused, because i did not know what good omens was. it doesn't make it any less of a bizarre sentence, though.
> 
> since the plants are afraid of crowley and are physically capable of shaking with fear, i figured that a) they are able to hear, if not see, and b) they have some form of control over their own movement, even if it's involuntary. that was a vaguely terrifying realization, so i did my best to ignore it and ended up writing a plant that's probably more sentient than strictly necessary. i'm sorry. this is why you shouldn't play god
> 
> among other things, this is a birthday present for my friend leah, so, yeah, happy birthday, leah.
> 
> this note is a trainwreck. i'm sorry. read the fic it's pretty good i think
> 
> the woodchipper thing might not actually be a real thing? idk i wrote this when i was tired and crowley's maybe a bit more violent than strictly necessary but HEY HE'S A DEMON

_“He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies on Radio Four, and thought it an excellent idea. Although_ talking _is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did._

_What he did was put the fear of God into them._

_Or, more precisely, the fear of Crowley.”_

__\- Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett,_ _Good Omens_ _

* * *

There was much to be said about Crowley’s small forest of houseplants.

One could say, for instance, that of all the houseplants in London, they were the most beautiful, the most fervent growers, the most verdant shade of green. One would be quite right.

One could also say, however, that the plants under Crowley’s ‘care’ were quite utterly terrified, and one would also be quite correct in that respect.

Crowley’s daily routine went like this:

Every day, Crowley would pace the room with his green plant mister, spritzing the leaves with hydrogen dioxide and outlining in extreme detail just what _exactly_ would happen if he were to find a spot, or heaven forbid, a dead leaf on one of the plants. And the leaves of the plants would shake.

A visitor to Crowley’s apartment, one who knew nothing of the proprietor of said apartment or of the greenery living under his tyrannical rule, might have asked Crowley if he’d left a window open. Crowley, after a particularly upsetting incident in the mid-nineties with a stray pigeon, did not leave his windows open; the reason for the shaking of that particular set of leaves was not the wind—no, rather, it was fear. Pure, unadulterated terror.

An irrational fear is a fear that, as one might divine from the name, is not rational. Those who are afraid of irrational things typically are so because of an imagination run wild. Humans are particularly skilled in the area of wild imagination, and so many humans over the years have developed irrational fears. What one might not know is that the imagination of a plant is not far behind that of a human. The real difference between a plant and a human is that when the plants in Crowley’s apartment developed a fear, it was completely rational, and their imaginations didn’t have far to run to conjure up a reason.

For the photosynthesizing denizens of Crowley’s apartment, the passing of the months was something to be feared, not celebrated. Of course, Crowley kept no calendars in his apartment (at least, not after the 2002-twelve-months-of-bumblebees calendar that Aziraphale had given him had run its course), but the passage of time is apparent even to plants.

Every couple of months or so, Crowley would walk the entirety of the room, the elegant click of his footsteps near drowned out by the sound of shivering leaves, and he would pick out an unlucky plant that had allowed its leaves to brown, or inadvertently become home to an insect. He would display the disappointing foliage to its friends one final time, bid them all say their last goodbyes, and carry the offending houseplant down the hall. The survivors, left behind in their pristine, sun-lit room, would hear the ominous sound of a woodchipper from an adjacent room, and since plants are incapable of screaming, they would hear nothing more.

When Crowley returned, he would menacingly show the empty pot around to the remaining plants.

For motivation, said Crowley. Can’t expect anyone to do anything without the right motivation.

-

There were no plants in Aziraphale’s preferred area of respite, unless you were to count the dead ones that made up a good portion of it. Aziraphale himself did not count the books as fallen trees, mostly because it made him a bit sad to think of all the trees that had been felled to create the books that he treasured so. It was a bit of a horrid thing to think about, but he consoled himself by reasoning that it was a necessary evil, as it were.

No, there were no plants in Aziraphale’s bookshop, as is the case with most bookshops. 

The main purpose of a plant, when kept indoors, is to brighten a room a bit—perhaps to make it feel a bit more lived in. As agreed upon by a variety of suburb-dwelling mothers and particularly nostalgic cooks, little plants or small pots of herbs on a windowsill give a home a feeling of being loved, which is the main reason that people will entertain the idea of growing herbs just by their window. Until said herbs die, at least.

Aziraphale’s bookshop, as with most bookshops, had the very particular quality of feeling loved even without the presence of a small potted plant, and so had never felt the need for one. The first plant to exist within Aziraphale’s bookshop had not started its life in such a place—in fact, the origin of that specific plant had been a place that mother plants tell their little baby plants about at night in order to get them to behave. The first plant ever to be placed on a windowsill on Aziraphale’s bookshop had been from Crowley’s apartment.

That specific plant had been very busy trying to grow up as green and tall as possible when Crowley had walked into the room, unannounced. It was a bit of a shock for all of the plants involved. He’d already watered and menaced them that day, after all.

However, when Crowley started his usual rounds, he didn’t seem particularly interested in telling them to grow better. In fact, he didn’t seem quite focused on their imperfections at all. When he came upon that specific plant, which at the time was doing its very best to look appropriately lively, he actually nodded approvingly. The plant felt a moment of relief before it was suddenly in the air, pot held aloft by the fingers of its terrorizer.

“Say goodbye to your friend, and all that,” Crowley said to the rest of them, sounding rather noncommittal. He glanced down at the plant in question. “Hopefully, you’ll never see him again.”

The selection of another sacrifice to motivation hadn’t been expected for another week, at least, but Crowley’s odd behavior was the last of the little plant’s concerns. What the most of its concerns were, as it was carried down the hallway, was how many steps it had left before it was tossed into a woodchipper. As it turned out, the answer was quite a few. The plant, instead of being brutally murdered for the sake of motivation, was carefully leaned up against the passenger seat of an old Bentley, and driven to an old bookshop. For a small sprout of foliage who had never heard anything but the sound of Crowley’s voice (usually shouting) and the sound of rustling leaves (usually shaking with fear), the sound of Queen was a pleasant sort of different.

The plant was about to be introduced to a whole host of new sounds, including the honking of horns, the subtle scrape of tires against cement, and the dulcet tones of an angel.

Another sound that the plant had never heard was Crowley’s voice, soft in a manner that was subdued, almost bashful. 

“Well,” he’d started, sounding nearly _nervous_ , “I just got to thinking about your bookshop the other day, and there’s no _green_ in it, is there. So, I thought, why not give him a plant. Brighten up the place a bit.” And the plant was handed off to the hands of another.

“Oh,” a new voice said, “why, thank you, Crowley.” He sounded positively touched.

“Yeah,” said Crowley, dragging out the sound, “just don’t let it get complacent, eh?” The plant did its best to look as green as possible upon hearing that.

With that, the object of the plant’s every fear (well, that isn’t quite accurate, because the plant feared the woodchipper a great deal) left the bookshop, leaving the plant in the hands of the new entity.

“You’re quite a nice little plant, aren’t you?” the new voice mused. “Very kind of Crowley. Now, where to put you… Ah, there you are.” The plant was placed down on a windowsill at the very front of the shop. It was quite a big window. “Plenty of light, and all that.”

Aziraphale had never heard of talking to plants. He’d been listening to Radio Three when someone on Radio Four had spoken about the benefits of speaking to your flora and fauna, inspiring Crowley to inspire the growth of his houseplants. What Aziraphale had heard, instead, was a very nice classical piece by some composer that he could not remember the name of but had died of pneumonia.

That said, Aziraphale still talked to the plant. It was purely out of the goodness of his heart.

“There you are,” he would say, “a nice drink of water. You’re growing rather nicely, aren’t you?”

The plant had never been praised before. It was a bit of a surprise, at first, but it quickly grew rather fond of being complimented.

Aziraphale was, admittedly, not very good at taking care of plants, despite his jaunt as a gardener. He would forget to water it sometimes, especially when he had just gone out somewhere with Crowley or when he had just gotten wrapped up in a particularly good book. The plant didn’t mind all that much. It still had a nice spot in the sunlight, and it could take a day or two without water. It was a strong grower, after all, and it had survived a good while in Crowley’s apartment. It knew how to look green and strong, if only for fear of its own life. Exchanging dependable water for a calm space and an encouraging gardener seemed a good trade, to the plant, who was more than happy to escape the folial nightmare that was Crowley’s apartment.

The plant had not escaped Crowley completely, however. The dreaded figure came to visit often, and every time, he would lurk near the plant’s window, threatening it with a fate worse than the woodchipper if it _dared_ to grow badly under Aziraphale’s care. Aziraphale, on the other hand, was becoming concerned about a potential crack in the window, with all the apparent wind when Crowley came to visit.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said one day, “how’s the plant been doing?” The threat in his voice was audible only to the potted specimen in question.

“It’s done wonderfully, actually.” The plant would have preened, if it had the ability to. “A good little plant, aren’t you?” Aziraphale addressed the plant almost as an afterthought.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley’s exclamation wasn’t directed at it, but the plant started to shake all the same. “You can’t just… you can’t just go around _praising_ it. It’s going to get ideas, doing that.”

“What kind of ideas?” Aziraphale sounded almost offended.

“Well—” Crowley made a number of unintelligible sounds. “How is it supposed to grow better if it’s got nothing to fear if it fails?”

“It seems to me that if it doesn’t do well, then I haven’t done my job as a gardener,” said Aziraphale, who was as adamant about being a gardener as he had been about being a magician. Yes, he had stopped doing it, but he figured that he could always pick it back up again, even if he wasn’t quite as good as he thought that he was. “Either way, there haven’t been any problems here. It’s growing quite well, don’t you think?”

“Angel!”

“Just the most wonderful little plant I’ve ever seen. Deserves a medal.”

Crowley let out another string of unintelligible noises. The plant didn’t know whether to shake with fear or to smile, and given that it couldn’t smile, seeing as it was a plant, it settled for straightening up as much as it could.

“I’m not giving you any more of my plants,” Crowley threatened, the tap of his footsteps heading towards the door. “Not if you’re going to spoil them like this.”

“Alright, then,” Aziraphale called after him, obviously not concerned by the threat. “I’ll see you for lunch tomorrow, Crowley.”

The door closed with a disgruntled mutter of “yeah, yeah,” and the plant was free of Crowley once again.

“You really are a good plant,” Aziraphale mused. “Really quite exemplary.”

The plant felt greener than it ever had in Crowley’s apartment.

**Author's Note:**

> what i've learned from writing this is that there are ABSOLUTELY ZERO SYNONYMS FOR THE WORD PLANT. WHAT THE HECK. 
> 
> i also learned that apparently, johann strauss's waltzes make for a good soundtrack to write good omens fanfiction. thanks, mr. strauss. sorry you had to die of pneumonia in the 1700s or whatever. waltzes by strauss are real nice i 10/10 recommend
> 
> also, it didn't occur to me until writing this fic that the plant in good omens. can feel fear. and that's not something i think i ever wanted to learn
> 
> anyway i'll probably write more good omens fic that's,,, not from the perspective of a plant,,, so keep an eye out for that? 
> 
> leave a comment if you liked it. i'm thirstier for validation than a plant is for water babey
> 
> JESUS CHRIST THE PLANTS IN GOOD OMENS FEEL FEAR WHY ARE WE SLEEPING ON THIS


End file.
